Stormy weather

I’m sitting on my couch right now. It’s 5:45 on Monday afternoon, and a storm is raging outside my window. Literally raging. It sounds angry. At 5:00 the sun was still out though the sky was beginning to look threatening and dark. Hot and intensely humid and oddly still, it just felt like the proverbial calm before the proverbial storm. And now at 5:45, all hell is breaking loose. The sky went from bright and sunny to gray to darkening to almost completely dark in a matter of minutes. A few drops of rain fell and then the sky just opened. The wind is gusting, as they say on the weather report. I haven’t seen any lightning but there’s been a steady rumble of thunder. This storm is no longer in the realm of the proverbial. It's as real as a heart attack. 

*****

We have lots of old, tall trees in our neighborhood and storms like this are always a little bit scary. I’m writing this on a Chromebook. The lights are still on and the house is comfortable, and we’re all at home listening to the local news broadcast. Who knows how much longer we’ll have power, though; and even though the Chromebook is fully charged, it won't work when the power goes out. The nonstop weather updates are making me anxious but I can’t seem to look away. It’s just weather though. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I can’t change it by watching the weather report, or by turning it off. It’s out of my hands. Humbling, really, but kind of liberating too. 

*****

Intense but brief, the stoem was over almost as quickly as it started, with almost no major consequences. Our power stayed on, as it did for most people here. No major downed trees, no serious flooding, no big lightning strikes, no tornadoes. At 5:45, we were hunkering down, with candles and flashlights and battery operated radio close at hand. By 7:15, my husband and I were in the car, on our way to Costco, as we had previously planned to do. And now it's Tuesday, 5:15 PM. There's not a cloud in the sky.